Latest Phishing Scam... Actually University Research

from the gotta-trick-you-to-understand dept

Lots of people are trying to research phishing scams in order to better understand them and come up with better ways to protect against them, but some folks are apparently a bit upset at research coming out of Indiana University that involved actually phishing a variety of people to con important information out of them in order to understand what kind of phishing scams work. The researchers and the university are defending the practice, saying they learned a lot from it, and it's legal to be deceptive for the purpose of research so long as the deception is no different than what a person might come across normally and the risk to the person is minimal. Still, if any of the information is eventually misused or gets leaked, it certainly could create some problems for the university (and universities are no stranger to leaking data). The university still claims that this kind of research is key to preventing phishing... but oddly, the article seems to highlight what works for phishing scams, rather than what works to stop phishing scams. So, right now, the research seems to be telling scammers how to be more effective scammers, rather than coming up with ways to stop phishing.

Phishing

1. You need to understand phishing to stop it. However, be carefully waht information you collect, as I'm sure the college will 'misplace' it publicly.
2. Stupid People will never go away. Can we say why UAC in Vista can be good. Or how can people really believe that they had a rich relative who died in Nigeria?

Well I can understand...

but oddly, the article seems to highlight what works for phishing scams, rather than what works to stop phishing scams. So, right now, the research seems to be telling scammers how to be more effective scammers, rather than coming up with ways to stop phishing.

They could be using the idea of exsposing the way the phishers operate. That way if the "secret" to phishing for info is no longer secret and everyone knows about it then people will hopefully wise up a bit. Kinda like someone telling how the magician made the elephant disappear.

why to perform phishing experiments

At first, many people may not see the benefits of phishing experiments, and may see it as a way to plainly confirm what is already known ("people fall for phishing attacks".) That is not what is done in phishing experiments, though.

First of all, in a well designed experiment, no credential is even harvested by the researcher. Instead, he or she instead verifies that that right credentials were input -- using the legitimate verification service. An example of how this is done, in the context of phishing eBay users, is available in

Why are experiments useful, then? I think a good way to explain the needs for experiments is:

1. To improve phishing countermeasures, knowing what works and what does not.
2. To predict trends, knowing what the yet not exploited human vulnerabilities are.
3. To improve security education. An example effort is www.securitycartoon.com -- this is directly influenced by phishing experiments.